


Belly's craving, got a shaking in my head

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Phantom pain, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but it's from a Donovan song, terrible title
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 22:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6772381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper's hip still hurts her sometimes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belly's craving, got a shaking in my head

Harper's hip still hurts her sometimes. 

The drill was excruciating. The worst pain she could imagine in her life. She could have expected that. But the ache lingered for so long, long after she could stand and walk again. It wasn't just the pain though, it was the helplessness. The cold metal table beneath her and the smell of disinfectant. The feeling of complete and total aloneness.

Harper had never been alone truly before. On the Ark she had surrounded herself with friends. Even the crime that got her arrested had been part of a group. As frightened as she was being imprisoned, not being alone had been her solace.

(Not that she had really regretted it. They had only wanted to protest, but someone had brought in a baton taken from a guard and it had escalated from there. There were harder charges to beat than involvement in a riot. She hadn't started it. Harper was many things but an instigator she was not).

Even on the ground, she had surrounded herself by the other delinquents, her former friends and new people alike. Then one by one, they began to fall to the violence of the Earth. Then, separated from the others in the mountain, Harper found herself truly alone for the first time.

Alone, and in pain, the night after her first surgery had been the worst in her life.

Then they had put Monty in the cage below her, and even though the second surgery hurt more than the first, at least she wasn't alone this time. 

This time when she yells, it feels like someone hears her. 

Shortly after the return from Mount Weather, her incision becomes infected, swollen and red. Abby helps her dress it and Harper tells her about the pain. 

Abby just shakes her head. 

"Bone marrow collection should normally be harmless, a day of pain at the most". 

The older woman's voice is somehow full of rage despite being totally even in tone. 

"But from the look of the site, I doubt they were careful or gentle. And they shouldn't have drilled more than once. Is it worse when you walk? Any limited motion?"

Harper shakes her head. 

After feeling along the bone, Abby declares that the drill site is probably just irritated, and that it should ease with time. 

She cleans the wound, and offers her painkillers, telling her that bone pain is among the worst known. 

Harper takes them a few times, then stops. They put her in a haze, and the haze reminds her too much of the pain from the drill. 

It does ease as time goes by. Arkadia is named, and times are uneasily peaceful if still hard. Jasper and some of the others are deeply haunted by what happened, but Harper is mostly able to continue on. Monty tries to hold Jasper up, but Harper wonders if he has ever let himself feel anything about what has happened to all of them. 

When Bellamy and Lincoln start teaching the others to fight, Harper attends every lesson. She has no desire to be a victim ever again. 

Then that peace is once again shattered. 

Pike's rise to power makes Harper angry. Angrier than she's been since they were on the Ark. She hadn't had time for anger in Mount Weather, but God help them, she had time for it now. 

(And even though she understands Monty's loyalty to his mother she is still beyond angry at him for going along with Pike. He has the good grace to look ashamed when she needles him for it. At least there's that)

The twinges come back, but she powers through them. She is strong now, and she can deal with the phantom pain. 

When Monty and Octavia return from the dropship, she doesn't have to ask to know that something horrible happened. 

Monty's never been demonstrative about his pain like Jasper. He's soldiered on, through Mount Weather and the corpse of Arkadia with barely a complaint. 

Harper tries to approach him when he sits along outside the trading post that night, but holds herself back, not wanting to intrude on private grief. 

But he leans his head back towards to the sky and lets out a cry, just one. Not a sob or a wimper, but something almost feral sounding. 

It chills Harper straight to the bone. Her hip aches, and she remembers hearing him yell when she was drilled back in the mountain, his voice the only thing anchoring her. She remembers him bringing her tea when she was still in the worst part of healing. She remembers him embracing her after letting her out of her chains. The ache in her at this moment is different that before, it pervades. She aches not for herself, but for him.

Monty doesn't acknowledge his pain publicly, and the others try to give him space, but Harper wishes so much that she could do something for him like he had for her then. 

(Emerson's assault on the group had been the closest thing to a living nightmare. Harper hadn't had too many bad dreams about the mountain, but seeing him again drags up every single one of them. Bile rises in her throat, and the pain from her hip spreads throughout her, nearly paralyzing her with fear. Never has she been more grateful to have found her friends again). 

Then, after what seems like forever of fighting and death, one day, nothing happens to them. No gunfire, no screaming. 

And goddammit, Harper isn't going to let something good pass her by. 

Monty seems surprised by her advances, but that doesn't surprise her at all. Private with his pain, and guarded with his joy is exactly like the Monty Green she has known. His lips are as soft as she imagined, and his arms squeeze her as tight as they did before. 

(Late, when she's above him, he runs one finger along the healed scar on her hip, and for once the reminder, and the ache it brings doesn't hurt).


End file.
